Brazil: signs of collapse as covid-19 spirals out of control (Analysis)

Brazil does not control the covid-19 and drags Uruguay 4:48

(CNN) -

You can hear the frustration in the nurse's voice as he narrates the video, approaching an open window.

"You have to be an engineer for this to work," he says.

You have to be like MacGyver.

The video passes through a woman on oxygen, the tube going down from her nose to the gurney she is sitting on and eventually exiting through the open window.

He runs to another window, the green tube swaying in the breeze over an open patio half a dozen stories below.

The tube ends at an oxygen connection in the wall of the other room.

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This is the only way the woman, a COVID-19 patient at this Brasilia hospital, can get oxygen.

The room where the oxygen source is located is so overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients, they have to stay in what would otherwise be a hallway, with the life-saving oxygen precariously connected.

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The scene is a microcosm of what is happening in Brazil right now in the midst of a brutal and out-of-control wave of covid-19.

On Thursday night, Brazil's Ministry of Health reported the appalling number of more than 100,000 new COVID-19 cases confirmed in a single day, the highest number in the country since the pandemic began.

So far, a total of 303,462 people have died in the country from the virus, according to official data.

But it's the seven-day averages that paint an even bleaker picture.

With 15,963 deaths from March 19 to March 25 and 14,610 deaths in the previous week, those are the highest numbers for the pandemic so far and they go in the wrong direction.

Brazil has recorded approximately 24% of all coronavirus deaths worldwide during the past two weeks, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

A variant of covid-19, P1, continues to ravage the country and experts agree that it is more contagious and potentially produces a more serious disease than previous strains.

Even the youngest people are not saved.

Of the 26 states of Brazil plus its federal district, only one or two on any given day have ICU occupancy rates below 80%.

More than half are above 90%, which means that if health systems have not yet collapsed in those states, they are at imminent risk of doing so.

Health systems have been flooded with patients who can no longer be adequately cared for due to a critical lack of space and supplies.

As Brazil suffers the worst days of this pandemic so far, there are signs of collapse at all levels of the health system in almost every state in the country.

Signs of collapse

First responders, hospital staff and even cemetery workers have told CNN that this latest wave has brought them down.

"It is a scene of war," said paramedic Luis Eduardo Pimentel in São Paulo.

"I can hardly describe what I am seeing, it is very sad what is happening to the country."

He described ongoing calls for COVID-19, preventable deaths and hospitals so overloaded that they take supplies from wherever they can.

CNN spoke to him after his shift ended, earlier than expected, after a hospital took the stretcher on which he had brought his covid-19 patient: the hospital had run out of beds.

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Examples like this are countless.

In a video released to CNN last week, 12 ambulances with patients inside are seen waiting outside a São Paulo hospital for beds to be made available inside.

CNN on Thursday visited a hospital designated to treat Covid-19 patients that had stopped accepting people because they had run out of space.

In a section normally reserved for 16 semi-intensive care patients, almost twice as many patients were being treated.

Several had already been intubated and normally would have been sent to an ICU, but that space does not exist in the hospital.

When ICU rates reach 90%, as happened in Sao Paulo on Thursday, they are effectively full, said Geraldo Reple Sobrinho, president of the state Council of Municipal Health Secretaries.

“Actually, that means full occupancy of the bed because every time there is a patient who is discharged or dies, it takes time to clean this bed and change the equipment.

It takes four or five hours.

Meanwhile, more and more patients continue to die.

In recent days, there have been so many deaths that burials in São Paulo cemeteries occur every few minutes.

The crematoria have not been able to keep up.

In a video shared with CNN, there are at least two dozen coffins waiting to be cremated - the demand is roughly three times what the facility can handle in a single day.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro gives a press conference at the Alvorada Palace in Brasilia on March 24.

The government's response ... or the lack of it

As his country falters during this latest outbreak, President Jair Bolsonaro has yet to take significant steps to try to implement a coordinated national response.

He delivered a televised address to the country on Tuesday night, saying that 2021 would be the "year of the vaccine."

But critics condemned the 3-minute speech as a half-hearted attempt at a public relations bailout on a day when Brazil set its own record for coronavirus deaths recorded in a single day.

The federal government appeared to commit another own goal the next day, and the Health Ministry announced that it would require more information from municipalities that report information on Covid-19 victims.

That sparked immediate concern that the additional requirements would reduce the number of reported COVID-19 deaths.

Those concerns seemed immediately justified, as the number of deaths reported on Wednesday was nearly 1,200 fewer than the day before.

• MORE: Mexico exceeds 200,000 deaths from coronavirus;

  This is how it compares with Brazil and the US, the only countries that have exceeded this figure

At the end of Wednesday, the Health Ministry suspended the new reporting requirements after a severe backlash from states and the public.

In the absence of a coordinated federal response, implemented restrictions designed to stop the spread of the virus have been left to the states.

Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Minas Gerais are among the states that have implemented night curfews, even as the Bolsonaro government filed a lawsuit in Brazil's Supreme Court declaring that only the federal government has the right to impose such restrictions.

However, this week the court sided with the states, calling Bolsonaro's argument "totalitarian."

CNN's Natalie Gallón, CNN journalists Marcia Reverdosa and Eduardo Duwe, and Kara Fox contributed to this report.

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